How The Rising Status Of Cats And Dogs Could Doom Biomedical Research

In November of 2010, 26,000 scientists descended on the San Diego Convention Center to attend the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. They weren’t alone. On the first day of the conference, thirty protestors gathered outside to denounce the use of animals in research. Some were splattered with fake blood; others held pictures of kittens and monkeys with their brains exposed. The demonstration didn’t catch the meeting’s organizers by surprise: they had already prepared a counterattack.